Who's doing the writing here?

I had a crazy idea a few weeks ago: some day I want to write an autobiography. Maybe once I'm old and have grand-kids I'll make that a project. It seems to me that God has blessed me with a fairly abnormal life, and although many days life has not been easy I have decided that I wouldn't change a single thing about it.

You see, all along God has been writing my story, and it's only just beginning! As He closes each chapter and begins a new one I grow, I get to know the Author's heart and mind a little more, I fall a little more in love with Him with each new page, and He makes me want to keep reading and living out this story to see what comes next.

Now, I can also clearly identify times in my life when I was the one controlling the pen (figuratively speaking of course) and attempting to write my own story. Those pages are a mess and I quickly learned that I am not nearly as good of an author as God is.

I think sometimes we get angry at God, at least I know I do, for writing something in our stories that we don't like. But here's the thing; we can't see the whole story like He can. We live on one page of the book at a time. Sure, we have memories of past pages and chapters and at times we may attempt to live those times out again but in reality that's not possible. And unlike reading a book made of paper and ink we don't have the privilege (though a debatable one) of skipping ahead a few pages or chapters, or sometimes to the very end, to see how everything works out. We have hopes and dreams for the future but no way of really seeing it. Sometimes God will give us a little clue, or even a peak at what is coming, but He also asks us to trust in Him and tells us, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,...For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

That's pretty reassuring and exciting for me! I love a good book and for some reason that I don't understand the Author of the #1 Best Selling Book in all history (which is a fact by the way) has chosen me to be a character in His continuing story. Like I mentioned earlier, one day I stopped trying to write my own story and handed the pen and paper over to Someone who has the biggest imagination, the most power, and the most beautiful handwriting and way with words. The most exciting part of all of this is that He wants to be the author of all of our stories, though He won't ever force us into doing something, He gives us that choice. I for one though am proud to wear His signature as the Author of my story.

I was reading the last chapters of a book called A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser, when the idea to some day write an autobiography came to me. The book talks about "how the soul grows through loss" and it put to words so many things that I had been unable to express, if even to myself, since my mom's death nine years ago. In this book the author describes what he has gone through and learned since a car accident took the lives of his mother, wife, and daughter. I had actually taken a break from reading and was writing in my journal when the majority of what I've just written came to me. When I finished writing I decided that I was going to finish the last chapter or two of the book, and I'll finish with what Jerry Sittser says at the end of the epilogue:

"But I have this sense that the story God has begun to write He will finish. That story will be good. The accident...was and remains a very bad chapter. But the whole of my life appears to be a very good book."